severalarrowslater

[ultimateinferno]

I've been thinking about Falin vs Laios on making friends. Laios being concerned for Falin's isolation and his excitement for making a friend of his own.

[dredgen-dumbass]

Redo of my pinned post, again, because I'm indecisive.

At a glance:

No screen name, he/him. Predominantly SFW blog, tws follow the normal content of Destiny 2. I swear like a sailor. Not the type for dni lists, just don't be a bigot. Asks are open to all. I don't mind mass likes/reblogs, and dw about derailing. The rest is under the cut.

Message from yours truly,

I genuinely thought I was going to just spam Drifter content for a few days, and then go delete Tumblr again once my brain calmed down about it. As it turns out, that isn't happening. I like the community here so far, which isn't something I've been able to say about Tumblr for some time now, and it seems like I'm going to stick around a while longer. That, and I thought I was just fixated on the one character, but Destiny itself is becoming a pretty big interest of mine, and I know I'll need somewhere to talk about it, so this is going to shift more towards that. I'm going to try to be a bit more cautious with tags so I'm not filling them with every Destiny related through that crosses into my brain, so I'm going to set up an (albeit shoddy) tagging system and be a bit more conservative with what gets put in the main D2 tag. Apologies if I flooded anything you follow, I'm used to posting in a much larger fandom where things get buried really quick, I didn't realize how bad it was until I tried to go through those tags myself, and... eesh.

So, me.

I know it's Tumblr culture to put every last detail in your bio, but personally I'm not comfortable with that. If you need more than I give, then just click off and move on. I understand wanting some idea of who you're talking to, but I think the things that matter will come up naturally through my posts. What I do think should be clarified, just as a matter of perspective with all the queer stuff in this fandom, is that I'm a gay dude. Other than that, I don't think any labels are relevant to this account. If something else becomes relevant, feel free to ask for clarification, I understand that some things read differently depending on who's saying them. Otherwise, respect my privacy, thanks.

Fandom chaos & such,

I want to keep discourse away from my blog, both fandom and real-world. Especially real-world, because Destiny is an escape for me, and I want to keep this as a separate space I've carved for myself, in the same way as the game is for me. That said, bigots can fuck off to hell. Y'all ain't welcome here just because I'm not interacting with the arguments. This is a safe space for everyone, provided you ain't making it unsafe for anyone else.

Destiny stuff,

I'm a casual player, have been going for about 3 years now. I'm a solar titan main.

My favorite character is drifter, I've been pretty clear on that, I think (/s). I'm still learning the game lore and such, so at the moment he's the only character I've actually gone in-depth reading about.

My other favorites are saint-14, saladin, shaxx, and ghost.

Expect my posts to mostly be about them.

This isn't a ship blog, though I may reblog ship content occasionally. I don't have any I particularly care for, aside from O14, but to me they're different because it's canon. Again, asks are open if you want to hear me talk about a specific ship.

I have been asked specifically about drifteris because I post sm about Drifter, and no I'm not a drifteris shipper. I read their relationship as platonic, and if I post about both of 'em it's not a shipping thing. I'm glad the ship brings more attention to the characters, though.

Fanart & fics,

I'll be honest, I've written a few short pieces of my yw. I don't plan on posting them, and even if I do I'm not sure that I'll connect them to this blog in any way. that's a question for future me, whether that's tomorrow or years from now.

Fanart is a pain for me right now. I want to make stuff, and I've done a little, but I'm currently in the traditional artist picks up digital art learning curve, so I'll probably continue to post and delete and post and delete. Feel free to repost my art, just credit me. Honestly, I haven't signed anything atp because I just don't expect anyone to repost it anyways, but as I progress that may become an issue and I don't want to be updating this weekly. Fanart requests are entirely open, destiny ocs included, I need the practice anyway. I do already have some sitting in my asks, so I'll be doing those first, but still.

I don't sit and vet all every account I reblog, so if I reblog something stolen or just uncredited let me know and I'll tag the artist.

If you have m/m or m/neutral (or just platonic) fic recommendations feel free to send em over. Gotta have something to keep me occupied.

Tagging system?

I've never made one of these before. I don't think I have the time to go through all of my previous posts and set them up with this, but from now on the structure will be:

#dredgenposting - all of my destiny-related rambling, because I don't want to fill the destiny 2 tag with my post spam.

#reblogs

#mild nsft - probably just sex jokes

#nsft - probably won't be used, but leaving it here in case it is so that I'm not coming back again to edit this

#discourse - not sure how much this will be used, but I'm bound to have a public opinion on something eventually

#fanart - my own fanart

#asks

if there's something you'd like tagged to filter in/out while looking through my blog, lmk. chances are I'm fine with incorporating it.

and that's it. thanks for reading, live long and prosper y'all.

[oathbreakerapologist]

Sortie Sad Sack Thought Journal 3: Food, Eating, Consumption

You know, it's kinda funny how many of the various Sad Sack intros/epilogues revolve around food.

It's actually quite a lot of them:

SADS #1 outro (not quite the epilogue but close): the gang talks about getting hotpot.

SADS #2 epilogue: Sal and Stone eat brunch (?) at the restaurant at which Evan works.

SADS #3 intro: Bar scene, though this barely counts and the actual consumption of drinks is SO far down the list of important images/motifs happening here, but I'm a completionist so it's going on the list.

SADS #4: Sal and Stone talk about making dinner (among other things), and the gang eats at the restaurant at which Evan works. Also Stone drinks quite a lot, but that's got a lot of plot function outside of the consumption motif, so that's an item of dubious inclusion like the SADS #3 bar scene.

SADS #5 is, I think, the only one in which this is largely absent (not counting #3.5 and #4.5).

That's a lot, right? It's pretty consistently present, right? It's also there in the nicknames used for the victims—Fleisch ("meat"), Fish, and Feast—explicitly reference food, and it shows up between Sal and Stone in the way that Sal uses the word "meat" in sexual contexts (there are so many different ways to linguistically reduce a person to their body, so the choice of "meat," linking to food specifically, is quite noteworthy).

Food/eating/consumption motifs in media generally do at least one of three things: (1) reinforce or deny the humanity of the eater, (2) suggest desire or compulsion (I'm putting "food as a sex metaphor" in this category), or (3) serve as class commentary.

Question 3: What does the food motif in SADS do for the narrative?

I'm going to rule out purpose (3), class commentary, right off the bat (and I'm going to do that without talking much about it because this isn't the post for that).

Purpose (1), the humanity thing, is plausible, but there's something to be said for the fact that SADS is already exploring affirmation/denial of humanity in ways that are both significantly more nuanced and significantly more interesting (in my opinion) than your standard food-motif-for-humanity. The showing/concealing of faces (see previous posts in this tag) is (again, in my opinion) the strongest one here, and I think it's fair to say that that pulls a lot more narrative weight than the eating motif because the face thing is MUCH more thoroughly interwoven into all parts of the narrative, while the food/eating scenes are generally framing scenes, not particularly integrated with... the main events. So, I don't know, you could make a case for a humanity reading of food/eating in SADS and I wouldn't fight you over it, but I'm not convinced that's the primary purpose.

Purpose (2), the desire thing, is also deeply plausible. A major psychological thread running through SADS is the question of the degree to which each character is killing because they want to, rather than out of some higher purpose (justice, vengeance, healing, etc.).

(This is a tangent, but if I had to rank the characters in terms of the degree to which I think they're desire-motivated, my list would be (from least to most desire-motivated) Mal, Stone, Jake, Sal, Garv.)

Anyway, when desire-as-motivator is such a major thematic element, it wouldn't be unexpected to see it appear as the content of a motif. But I have three problems with the idea that desire is the primary thing communicated by the food motif.

(Haha, surprise, that "tangent" wasn't actually a tangent at all. That's about to be relevant.)

The first problem is that you would expect the motif to be most strongly associated with the characters whose relationship to desire is most narratively significant. That's Garv, of course. But he's notably absent from quite a lot of the scenes focused on eating/consumption (see, for instance, his almost total absence from the conversation about hotpot in SADS #1), and the (relatively slim number of) scenes focused on him generally have nothing to do with food (see, for instance, his date with Namrata in the intro of SADS #4). This might actually be relevant to the food-as-humanity-indicator thing—perhaps a relevant topic for a forthcoming post on The Haunting and Perplexing Question of the Ontological Status of Garv—but that doesn't resolve my general suspicion that humanity signaling is not what food is doing here. Point being, if that's what the motif is doing, then it's attached somewhat weirdly to characters to whom we wouldn't expect it to attach.

The second problem is a bit more minor, but it's still there, and that is that the showing/revealing of faces thing also accounts for the desire component of the narrative in a way that's more nuanced and more interesting than the food-as-desire-signifier thing. That comes about through the Levinasian reading (again, see previous posts in this tag), which is perhaps a bit of a niche and speculative interpretation of SADS, but I think I've got sufficient grounds for it.

The third problem is the near absence of food from Sortie. (Oops, I lied, this isn't really about Sad Sack, or at least it's not about Sad Sack anymore.) Sal is, interestingly, one of the characters in SADS that occurs most often in food-motif scenes. And yet, the food/consumption motif very nearly drops off the map in Sortie (at least in #1–#3). Notably, in Sortie #3, nothing at all gets eaten during Sal and Mary's "brunch date."

There's a couple plausible ways to rectify this discontinuity. One would be to say that Sal has changed quite a bit between SADS and Sortie. But has he really? (I'm not convinced.) Another would be to take the absence of eating as a new absence of humanity indicator, possibly to do with his metaphorical—and somewhat literal—rise from the dead at the end of SADS; dead men don't need to eat. But he does eat, albeit briefly. In Sortie #1, he's seen eating a banana (paging Dr. Freud). So the absence isn't really an absence but a substantial decrease in presence of a motif that may still be there.

Interesting. Suspicious.

Question 3.1: What feature of Sal's narrative arc accounts for the diminishment of the food motif between SADS and Sortie?

Not sure yet. To be determined, maybe.

[flecks-of-stardust]

Pinned Post Eyyy

Call me a name enough times and I'll probably start responding to it, which is what happened to me with Fleck. I also go by Stardust. Pronouns are yes and whatever is funny, but as a general rule of thumb, please use neopronouns and they/them for me if I don't know you. I also use mirror pronouns.

Not a spoiler free blog. I can and will post full spoilers of the stuff I'm interested in. Most commonly blogging about Rain World (including Downpour) at the moment, with a smattering of Hollow Knight and Bug Fables stuff. You can blacklist the main tags if need be.

I may occasionally talk about politics related to my home city. If I do, it'll be tagged with #hong kong rants for blacklisting purposes.

If you talk about hating any sort of arthropod and wanting to kill them I don't want you here. I don't care if you have a phobia or if you have a legitimate reason to be afraid, I don't want to see bug hate. Yes this includes wasps, yes this includes mosquitoes, yes this includes generally unpopular bugs. I block on sight if you leave comments like that on my blog.

For those interested in getting a better look at my header image, here is the associated post!

Current main project(s)

I run @innocence-wont-save-you, an interactive fiction game about Unparalleled Innocence! You can find more information about it on that blog and its pinned post.

I sometimes post IWSY stuff on this blog as well, particularly stuff that is not in character for the IWSY blog. Those posts are tagged with #IWSY, which also includes posts that I find relevant to the overall story. I love talking about the story and the worldbuilding I've done for it, so feel free to talk to me about that! I will gently nudge you over to the blog itself though, because it's designed to take questions like that!

I am also conducting independent research on people's experiences with imaginary friends. If you'd like to participate in the research, this post has more information and a link to the survey.

Other projects

You may have seen me talk about Dreamless and Deathless on this blog before. Those are now split off from their respective source material into an original story universe, Godslayers. Their respective tags, #dreamless au and #deathless au, now serve as archiving, if you'd still like to look through them for whatever reason. They are not linked because I'm unsure of how much I'm comfortable sharing; expect posts in there to be pruned.

I have some stuff related to my Hollow Knight work that I am comfortable sharing, though!:

bug color vision, specifically worldbuilding around non-human color vision that you can use for your buggy writing

language analysis of hollow knight, which is what it says on the tin

and there is #translation complaints, a series I started to talk about Hollow Knight's Chinese translation. It's been a while since I've updated this, but I will go back to it eventually.

Crochet Patterns

I currently have two released crochet patterns! All are free to use, and if you make one with my pattern, feel free to tag me to show me what you've made!

Mini Iterators — Make your own fun sized iterator puppet! (Cloak not included.)

Tiny Slugcats — Make your own pocket sized slugcat!

Tag directory

I crochet and knit a lot, as you may be able to tell from my header! I have dedicated tags for my crochet and knitting projects, which are #crochet shenanigans and #knit mischief respectively.

I have a general tag for my art, #my art, for non-fiber art pieces as well.

Writing wise, I've put a lot of my writing on Tumblr. Rain World pieces use the tag #rain showers, and other writing (usually prose) is tagged #little natterings. Additionally, I've put a few multi-chapter stories on my blog, which are:

#the echo of destruction, a series of seven stories about the iterators.

#avengeance, a four chapter short story about Arti.

#lunar greetings, a five chapter story about Moon and those she meets.

#memory fragments, a series that features the various members of Survivor and Monk's family. This is currently still being written.

All of these stories can also be found on AO3, where I use the same username.

I'm very lazy about following people, so if I talk to you a lot but haven't followed you, don't take it personally. I just like to keep my dash tidy.

For my own use: Pup Masterlist

[found-family-my-beloved]

Rules for new tumblr users

I'm sure people will have seen other mcyt blogs first and they've all given warnings but I'm just making this to pin at the top of my blog and so I can edit it when I inevitably realise I've forgotten something.

General ground rules:

If you have a default profile picture, blog and haven't reblogged anything, you will likely get blocked as a potential spam account. It doesn't have to be a lot, just search the tags for some of your interests and reblog some cool art or something.

You have to curate your own dashboard on tumblr. Search and follow the tags of things you enjoy, find users within those tags you want to see more from, follow and reblog posts from them. And if you aren't enjoying yourself, don't be afraid to unfollow people again (we don't usually pay attention to follower counts) and block tags/people if you really aren't happy seeing them.

If you want to keep things nice and neat, most of us will have a main blog (the one you get when you join the website) and then for any particularly strong interests will have a side blog. You can't like or follow from side blogs, but you can reblog things easily and people can follow side blogs if they share that interest with you. You can even make group blogs by going to the side bar of your sideblog and clicking 'members'!

Don't censor words, especially in the tags. You won't get reported or 'shadowbanned' for saying words like 'kill' or 'fuck' and if you do censor them then people who have them as blocked words and may be triggered by them will see them anyway.

When you join tumblr, there will automatically be sections showing what you've liked and who you've followed publically visible on your blog. Not only can you make these invisible in your settings, but we actively encourage it! People don't usually pay attention to them anyway but it's easier for you to like the things you want when you know people won't see them and judge you.

If you want to have a conversation with other people and get replies, put what you want to say in the main text of reblogs. If you're just trying to add a funny comment or say things without people responding to them, put it in the hashtags or as a reply. It means you can reblog things from other people without also having to reblog hundreds of people's random little comments.

Mcyt specific:

If you're gonna make posts, use 'mcyt' rather than the word 'mine/craft' when you're tagging. That tag is reserved for people who want to talk about the game and if you start talking about your blorbos in their tag, you will be told off for it. Same with tags where the word is included, use (e.g. use mc championships instead of the full name because it will still get picked up by the game's tag)

There are people in the mcyt communities on tumblr who ship and will post about those ships in the main tags. I'm personally not one of those people and try to avoid it where possible but you will inevitably come across it. If that's not your thing, don't make posts raving about how terrible it is or start harrassing them. If you don't want to see it just block the people doing it, block the relevant tags and move on. The communities here are pretty good at tagging their stuff using 'hermitshipping' for hermitcraft, 'trafficshipping' for the life series, 'empireshipping' for empires, and 'dsmpshipping' for dream smp. I don't think it happens much for dsmpblr but the others it's a regular occurence.

A lot of us (including myself) don't want to be noticed by content creators! We were here first and for the people who write fics or make art, they may feel uncomfortable posting if there's a chance a CC will see it. I believe Aimsey's now saying there's an 'Aimsey look' tag that they will go through each week so only people who wanted to be noticed will be, and I know we can't really do much to stop CCs going through the hashtags but just don't @ them in posts unless they're your own or OP specifically says you can.

No drama please! This is supposed to be a chill space and people moving over from twitter aren't going to ruin that. We've been here longer than you have, so you're the guests under our house rules. This is especially the case when it comes to MCCs. Leave Scott and Noxcrew be!

This is a personal one but please don't complain to me about buildmart. Yes I know people hate it and think it's unfair but I and other people here really enjoy it so I will simply block people who complain about it. We're all entitled to opinions but it's really tiring to see people shit on it once a month every month.